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Monthly Archives: November 2014

The year is 2015 and it is the time of Radio’s rebirth. The crushing reality that digital, the pure plays, and traditional, appointment TV had not delivered the market share or brand awareness that so many predicted only a few years back, has finally dawned on the accountants, manufacturers, media experts, bloggers, and various agencies who were the vocal proponent of almost any media except Broadcast Radio.

It is also the dawn of sophisticated consumer research coupled with actual purchases and filtered through the prism of an impartial ROI media analysis. The term ROI became synonymous with Radio as case study after case study proved decisively how powerful and cost effective Radio truly was, and always had been. Years of reducing Radio to single digit media budgets had ended as Radio finally took its place as a full partner at the media table of advertising campaigns across the country.

Advertisers faced brutal competition on all fronts and an ever mobile and restless customer base that clearly listened to local Radio; and so advertisers learned they could no longer invest in the “shiny new objects” or a promised revenue return that could not be substantiated or proven over time. They abandoned the various “new best things” in favor of the documented power of Broadcast Radio, and in all its forms and devices from which it was constantly airing content 24/7.

It is also the time of actual Radio listener growth. Despite all the competition from so many platforms and so many entertainment and information options, Radio listening continued to grow. Its universal human appeal could not be stopped or even slowed from the massive marketing assaults of Sirius/XM, Pandora, the In-Dash media options, and all of the other Internet pure play music services, which now numbered about 10. Continue reading →